


i followed my heart down into the darkest hole

by sapphicish



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Introspection, Post-Season/Series 07, references to all the awful shit danny did, references to warie and mallie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-07-31 13:37:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20115973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: The aftermath of Marie's actions, and how she deals with the loneliness. (She doesn't.)





	i followed my heart down into the darkest hole

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know how protection units in prison work and i don't care i'm just sad for her :(

Marie has a voice in her head.

It sounds like Danny.

It isn't so much a voice as it is the memory of it, of his little fingers grasping onto her hand, of his ringing laughter, the way he'd groan with the familiar embarrassment of any child when she touched his hair but he always let it happen anyway. The way he loved Allie. The way he loved her.

The way she loved him.

She rarely recalls him older in those moments. He's always tiny and young and so full of innocence, with his whole life ahead of him, not to be ended because of something someone else did. Not to be ended because of something _he_ did. 

She doesn't think about it. Tries not to, and succeeds, mostly. A mother should love her child at all stages of their life.

But it's harder, isn't it, when you know about the dark stages too?

Harder and colder and sharper, and Marie thinks once, well, it's fine. It's absolutely fine, because she has other things to do than to worry about it and it wouldn't happen again. Sometimes children were extra clumsy with other people and their feelings and their bodies when they were growing up.

But then she'd close her eyes at night and see the girl's face in her mind, think about how they had to switch schools, how they had to move, how Danny moved on and only complained that they were moving too far away from his friends, seemingly unaware that he had done anything wrong at all. And that had been it.

And the girl, well, Marie never thought about her again. She didn't think about her face or her pretty hair or her smile, or the way her life would be changed forever while Danny got to move on, past it, like it wasn't even a hurdle for him and of course it wasn't. Of course.

Marie didn't think about those things at all back then.

She still doesn't.

She also doesn't think about the second girl, the one she learns about long, long after he's dead.

She doesn't.

_Mum,_ he says quietly, forlorn and longing, when she sees Ruby at the end of the hall. _Mummy._ Like that; soft, young, a little boy's voice. The way she wants to remember him, not–

_You tell her, Allie,_ Marie says. _You tell her that Danny would never, never..._

Of course she goes after Ruby then. Of course she does.

Of course Allie betrays her again. Of course she does.

What's funny – in a sick and twisted way – is that she can't be upset with her in the moment, and not even after, when everything is settling into a sort of numbness.

Marie throws up the moment she enters the ambulance on a stretcher and she blames it on the pain when they ask her.

It is. A type of pain. Just not the one they think.

Then she's being carted off, cuffed and wrapped in white.

For a while, she feels nothing at all. She smells her own blood, yes, and she feels her own clammy skin, and she looks at her own shaking hands, but there's nothing. She's already cried, and screamed, and now there's – nothing.

Then the sharp adrenaline fades, replaced with morphine.

That's a different kind of feeling nothing.

So it's just her, just sitting alone in the hospital, awake, awake until the meds kick in and she drifts off and she dreams and she wakes up and she drinks water with a hand that shakes just a little and the other is always, always handcuffed to the bed, and she falls asleep and she wakes up and there's a nurse checking her vitals and she falls asleep and she wakes up.

She has nightmares, Allie shooting the gun, again and again. Blood in her mouth. Blood sticky in her hair, on her clothes. Crying. Sobbing. Screaming. Is that Allie or is it –

_I'm done now,_ Allie says and

drops the gun and

Marie thinks – _oh,_

like a gunshot to the leg, just as painful, and that's because she knows then that she's lost Allie.

She's fortunate that her parting with Will isn't so much blood and screaming, but it still hurts.

She shouldn't be surprised. Loneliness is the most painful thing imaginable, she knows that too well, and now–

Well, now she has no one.

Now she'll never have anyone ever again.

The only people she can reasonably blame for that is Brody, and herself.

And Brody's dead.

She's always hated hospitals, especially after Danny's death, so it's strange she hopes for an even longer stay than the one she gets, because at least here the room is big and bright and there are _people,_ always people, near and watching and checking up on her even if they don't want to and they clearly don't want to, having heard all about her in the news, one of the monsters that got two people killed.

She's never been into Protection, and she's liked it that way, and now there's no one to get her out, to stop it, to say _all right, you can stay._ What's worse is that she knows it's for the best, because she knows what would happen the moment she steps back into the prison: all eyes on her, shivs gripped tight in angry, trembling fingers. Maybe she'd die in the showers, her throat slit like Kaz Proctor's, or maybe she'd be strangled, maybe she'd be beaten.

It's what she'd deserve, according to them. According to all of them.

She's told to _stay still, Winter,_ during the strip search, bored exhaustion in the voice of a guard she barely recognizes, clearly someone who wants to get the last stretch of her shift over with quietly and calmly. It isn't her fault that she's still wavering on her feet, pain shooting down her leg when she moves a certain way. They remove the cast a day before she's transported but it doesn't matter, it hurts anyway. The scar remains pink and fresh; the ache remains hard and stabbing. But Marie wants to get it over with, too, so she stays still.

In the silence of the Protection unit, Marie paces, breathes, paces. The cell is bigger. The bed bigger. The lighting better. It's even spacious, with enough room for all her things. She'll get a shower every morning, and a bit of time alone outside every day with only a guard for company. It isn't inhumane at all, really. Or so they say. But it's a cell, and it's quiet, and she can't hear the clamoring of other inmates. What's lacking is the people, and the people are always what matter to her the most. Her skin itches. She wants Will, and she wants Allie, and she wants Danny, but his voice is silent. She wants heroin. She really, truly does. She would kill for heroin. She would gladly be shot, again, for heroin. She would do anything.

She would do anything for anything

and she

screams.

“It wasn't my fault,” she says, beating her fists against the walls.

“I didn't kill anyone,” she says, a sob catching in her throat.

“I just wanted out,” she says, sliding down to the floor with her knees pulled to her chest.

She wants

out

she wants

Allie and Danny and Will and Zara and heroin and she wants her _freedom._

This isn't the slot, where she'll eventually emerge in weeks or months and have Allie waiting for her on the outside, her body warm and welcoming when she sweeps Marie into her arms, laughing sweetly in her ear, bright as bells. Will won't visit her late in the night, won't look at her the way she liked. There won't even be Brody there, slipping heroin into her hand through the bars in the dark, feeding her what she needs most.

“Danny,” she says to the encroaching darkness. “Danny.”

She would give it all up if he would come back to her now. She hadn't been a good mother then, but she would be now, if given the chance. She would pay so much attention to him, shower him with gifts, be at every one of his games, throw the most extravagant parties for him on every birthday, after every victory.

She would make sure that he wouldn't hurt anyone, that he would be good, that it wouldn't be her fault that he was dead and he was a rapist and that he was a dead rapist and that no one was mourning him the way she was, constantly, always, like a gong struck in her chest again and again.

She would teach him better, would make sure that he was better, kinder, gentler. He would never lay a hand on a girl like that. Her Danny would never, not the one she envisioned when she thought of him, the good version, the safe version, young and laughing and cherubic, with round cheeks and a head of blonde fluff. Young, the way children ought to be, rather than growing up and becoming monsters.

Rather than growing up and dying.

But when she opens her eyes, cheeks wet with tears, she's still in the same prison, the same unit, the same corner of the same cell, and all that's left in the world are the people who don't give a shit about her.

Everything is silent

and

she

is

alone.


End file.
